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Emma Redux
Emma Redux, 2006, was the second raid carried out by TLDR against The EmmaWatson.net forums, which occurred exactly a year after the infamous original raid that had sparked the Emma War. Background Since the Emma War, public opinion, fueled by paranoia, had dramatically turned against raiding. This, along with the beginnings of The TLDR Counterculture Movement, had essentially spelled the doom of raiding on the TLDR. TLDR had recently emerged victorious in the IBTL War, but that had been thanks to Tiffanie's hacking skills, not raiding. HellPenguin's posting career had also essentially ended, since he had been MIA for most of early 2006. Without him, motivating anyone to raid was practically impossible. HellPenguin Returns This changed in Spring of 2006 when HellPenguin suddenly made a triumphant return, bringing with him a bold proposal to strike back at the Emmaphites on the anniversary of the first raid, restoring the forum's honor and leading to a rebirth of classical TLDR culture. This was met with some criticism, especially from newer counterculture posters like Zorg and Chopsticks who eschewed the 2005 raiding culture that had defined TLDR's early history. Also, even after almost a year, paranoia and superstition surrounding EmmaWatson.net still remained. However, HellPenguin succeeded in rallying many Emma War veterans, as well as fresh-faced new recruits who only knew of the Emmaphites from history. The reformed TLDR army planned to strike several weeks later on the exact anniversary of the 2005 Emma raid. This time, they would use proxies and fake emails, and would avoid posting x-rated material that might get them in trouble with their ISPs. The raiders began to gather their resources, thirsty for long-awaited revenge. Preparation In order to reduce the risk of TLDR being discovered by Emmaphite admins again, the now-dead DoS, HellPenguin's defeated forum from his civil war with Lazrik and Nigma late the previous year, was transformed into a raiding forum and the entirety of raid planning was moved to there. After the attack, the plan was to delete DoS to destroy the last traces of anything that could link TLDR to the raid. As mid July approached, the raid plans were going into full swing. Members had been trolling the Emmaphites for weeks already, creating unrest and dissent within their ranks. Morek had sneaked in 80 extra accounts, proxies had been stockpiled, Glue was experimenting with destructive Flash scripts called Flash bombs that froze computers and caused memory leaks. Another type of attack that had become popular among Tilders over the past few months was quote bombing. Making empty quotes within quotes repeatedly would eventually break the format on Invisionfree, rendering entire threads unviewable. However, there were setbacks shortly before the attack. A great many of Morek's accounts had been somehow discovered by an Emmaphite admin. All but 30 of them were deleted. It was also discovered that quote bombing would not work since EmmaWatson.net used the paid Invision service instead of Invisionfree, and its software was slightly different. Glue's Flash bombs would not be as effective since Flash avatars were also not enabled. The Attack Regardless, as the raid date approached, the raiders had more than enough resources at their disposal. Exactly one year after the beginning of the Emma War, the TLDR struck again with disturbing gore images linked to Flash bombs and enough proxies to make them completely untraceable. Every forum was flooded with spam topics and old threads were bumped with military precision. The largest problem during the raid was the overload of EmmaWatson.net's server, slowing down spam considerably but also making it almost impossible for admins to take any action. After the forum had been trashed to their satisfaction, TLDR eventually withdrew on its own terms to sit back and watch the ensuing carnage. Effects Disappointingly, the lack of obscene x-rated images did not force the admins to shut down the entire board as they had a year earlier, nor did they make any hilarious official statements as they had a year before. Although the forum had been temporarily utterly destroyed, everything was cleaned up within a few hours and the forum continued as normal. Because their attack hadn't seemed to attract any major outrage, the plan to delete DoS was abandoned and it became a permanent raid board, autonomous yet loyal to the TLDR. Although it had been fun, the destruction and chaos caused by the attack had not met expectations. A rebirth of classical TLDR culture now seemed impossible. Regardless, many newer posters had taken a liking to raiding. Many of the same raiders were inspired to attack TIAC less than a month later during The TIAC War. Emma Redux was the last public, forum-wide raiding effort TLDR ever engaged in. From then on, with the aid of the anonymity provided by DoS (and hidden forums after the destruction of DoS in 2008), TLDR raiding began to become a more clandestine affair. Category:History